Wednesday, April 25, 2007

If a player didn't see it, it didn't happen. If a player was there, but was too busy doing something else to notice, it didn't happen. If a player saw it, but couldn't tell what it was, it didn't happen. If a player saw it, but didn't care, it didn't happen.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The verdict is in, I massively underestimated the budget for a two-year, large-scale multiuser online game. Oh wait, no, I massively overestimated the budget. The lesson here is that facile, back-of-the-envelope calculations please no one. On the other hand, it generated two kind and considered lengthy responses which will be invaluable in shaping my future posts on production budgets.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

I wanted to like it, I really did. So when the 14 day free trial was offered, I signed up, downloaded, logged in and attempted to play for almost six hours. I have never seen a more newbie-unfriendly interface in my life. The game ran at one frame per second until I upgraded my video driver, even though World of Warcraft played fine on it, at which point it ran at eight frames per second except in towns or combat when it dropped back down to one frame per second. I would spend ten minutes walking from the spawn point to the front lines, die without ever seeing an enemy on the ground and repeat. It was horrible, and yet I counted at least forty other people playing on the same battlefield as me. And that was the best thing about the game. My teammates were both committed and helpful.

It reminded me a lot of Counterstrike. Easy to die, and when you do, it's a wait before you get to play again. But where Counterstrike let you view the game from a living player's camera until the next round, WW2O lets you respawn immediately but forces you to walk the usually lengthy distance back to the front lines.